I'm very happy that you consider buying chocolate for me one of the signs of our friendship :)
But, more seriously - yeah, this is the difficulty with my field of study. Because the signs that used to stand for friendship (kissing, intense expressions of emotion, the use of the word 'love') now signify a romantic/erotic relationship, modern scholars misread them a lot. (Sorry, ghost of John Boswell!)
To confuse the issue even more, these signs weren't one-meaning-only even in the twelfth century. A lord kissed his vassal on the lips when he was receiving homage; male friends kissed each other on the lips; a bishop kissed a king on the lips to give the sign of peace...and lovers kissed each other on the lips as well. The expectation was on the recipient and the viewers to interpret the sign correctly, and for the most part, they did. But there was also the possibility of accidental or intentional misreading of the signs of friendship for the signs of love.
So, in the twelfth century as today, whenever strong affection is present, the signs of friendship and romantic love can get blurry,and there is the potential for misreading.
I'm not sure what signs we should bring back - honestly, we've still got a lot of them. Formal feasting --> inviting people to parties - and conversely, excluding people from the feasting table/not inviting people to parties to show that you're not their friend anymore. Ritual gift-giving --> birthday presents. Or, to a lesser extent, the ritual Christmas-card exchange, which functions kind of like the exchange of letters between monks.It almost matters less what the letters say than the fact that they get exchanged - the reciprocity is the important thing.
My personal favorite medieval friendship ritual is the one to break a friendship, though. If you want to tell someone that they're really not your friend anymore, you break a stick at them :)
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But, more seriously - yeah, this is the difficulty with my field of study. Because the signs that used to stand for friendship (kissing, intense expressions of emotion, the use of the word 'love') now signify a romantic/erotic relationship, modern scholars misread them a lot. (Sorry, ghost of John Boswell!)
To confuse the issue even more, these signs weren't one-meaning-only even in the twelfth century. A lord kissed his vassal on the lips when he was receiving homage; male friends kissed each other on the lips; a bishop kissed a king on the lips to give the sign of peace...and lovers kissed each other on the lips as well. The expectation was on the recipient and the viewers to interpret the sign correctly, and for the most part, they did. But there was also the possibility of accidental or intentional misreading of the signs of friendship for the signs of love.
So, in the twelfth century as today, whenever strong affection is present, the signs of friendship and romantic love can get blurry,and there is the potential for misreading.
I'm not sure what signs we should bring back - honestly, we've still got a lot of them. Formal feasting --> inviting people to parties - and conversely, excluding people from the feasting table/not inviting people to parties to show that you're not their friend anymore. Ritual gift-giving --> birthday presents. Or, to a lesser extent, the ritual Christmas-card exchange, which functions kind of like the exchange of letters between monks.It almost matters less what the letters say than the fact that they get exchanged - the reciprocity is the important thing.
My personal favorite medieval friendship ritual is the one to break a friendship, though. If you want to tell someone that they're really not your friend anymore, you break a stick at them :)